Template talk:Achievement table/Achievement db (Archive)
Hi, to anyone who reads this, and doesn't know what this is for. This is supposed to hold all the information on all the achievements. Clearly, it doesn't have all of them yet. In the future, I hope it can be used a simpler method than Template:Infobox achievement - instead of entering the values yourself, you'd just type the name of the achievement, and the template would call up the rest. A similar thing would work for displaying the tables of achievements. The one other advantage has to do with personal achievement pages. I'm creating a personal achievement page template, which utilizes Template:CSS click. The only reason I use CSS Click over is because imagemaps don't accept parameters. The one alternative to CSS Click is Template:Clickpic, but for that you need to know four random letters and numbers that help identify the image, and while this is fine when you know which image you'll be using, it makes things very difficult when you have over 300 possibilities. So, the Small-1, Small-2, Large-1, and Large-2 options are for holding those four cryptic values for the small and large achievement images. The reason Clickpic is better than CSS Click is because CSS doesn't act very politely for screen-readers, and thus Clickpic is preferred. To use this template, type . (If you didn't know, "db" stands for "d'ata'b'''ase".) The possibilities for are: *Orb Coins *Orb Points *Game *Game_ (The name of the game with underscores instead of blanks) *Requirement *Secret *Members *Seasonal *Small-1 *Small-2 *Large-1 *Large-2 I think all of these attributes' uses are pretty self evident. Timeroot Talk • • 09:58, 10 January 2009 (UTC) :You should probably add a note on how you plan to distinguish between Escape_Vector/Achievement:Speed_Demon and Hold_the_Line/Achievement:Speed_Demon. OrbFu 11:53, 10 January 2009 (UTC) ::Perhaps "Speed_Demon-EV" for the escape vector achievement, and "Speed_Demon-HL" for the Hold the Line achievement. A similar thing would be used for the defender achievements. Good point, I hadn't thought of it, though. Oh, and if anyone reads this, '''feel free to help with this! Timeroot Talk • • 13:53, 10 January 2009 (UTC) Protection If we're going to start using this, we obviously should protect it. At this point, I think semi-protection would be more reasonable, but cascading protection would save time. What do you think? I'll semi-protect it for now. Timeroot Talk • • 00:04, 28 February 2009 (UTC) Overly Complicated This method of adding achievements and games to the database seems a lot more complicated than just using Template:Infobox achievement . I think that Infobox achievement is easier for users who are not familiar with wiki code to use in order to add new achievement pages. A lot seems to have changed while I've been gone, could someone explain how we are doing the achievement pages now? --[[User:Bigd56|'Bigd56']] | Talk 05:34, 3 April 2009 (UTC) :Well, firstly, welcome back. =) Now, all the data for the achievement tables on main game article pages have been moved to one HUGE article, which is the main namespace article of this page. That's basically it. View the source page for 36 Card Trick to see exactly what I mean. 19118219 Talk 10:17, 3 April 2009 (UTC) ::I have already discussed with Timeroot some of the concerns I have about this approach here. Quartic ~ insanity is a virtue | Talk 12:10, 3 April 2009 (UTC) :::Achievement pages are still just like they were - all the info is passed through the paramaters. And yes, I know that it's awkward adding a new game. But really, adding a new achievement or correcting something is very straightforward. I'm hoping that maybe, some time in the future, when editing the db is more simple, and it's all complete, that we could also use it on the achievement pages... but that's still a long ways away, don't worry. The other option, which only occured to me a couple days ago, is if we could somehow get the actual achievement pages to stay just the way they are, but with some invisible changes to Infobox Achievement. Then, any pages that needed to could call the data up from the page. We could totally do away with the db, I guess... but we'd still have to keep the Achievement List, so that an achievement doesn't get "lost"... :::All this would be in a perfect world, however, so I doubt that much of it will happen anytime soon. Currently, the achievement db is just used on 3 or 4 pages: :::*36 Card Trick :::*Arcanists :::*Bouncedown :::*Virogrid :::And it's almost ready for Brick-a-Brack. :::Quartic, I'm aware that it's dangerous having it all in one article. So, I branched it out... Now, there is no data in the actual Db - no to mention it's fully protected. Timeroot Talk • • 16:17, 3 April 2009 (UTC) ::::Actually, it's semi-protected. Quartic ~ insanity is a virtue | Talk 18:05, 3 April 2009 (UTC) :::::I meant, it will be protected once it's used on more than, uh, 5 pages. I forgot to mention, it's also used on MediaWiki:Tips. Once it's maybe used on, say, 10 pages, we could fully-protect it. Timeroot Talk • • 18:22, 3 April 2009 (UTC) Might it be worth taking a look at mw:Extension:DataTable? That should reduce the complexity a fair bit. OrbFu 18:25, 3 April 2009 (UTC) :Ooh, that looks pretty... it basically does what I've been trying to do all along... *Smile slowly spreads over face* I just hope it would be compatible with Wikia - take ReplaceText, for instance... it does something weird with the Job Queue, so it doesn't work on Wikia. Timeroot Talk • • 19:00, 3 April 2009 (UTC) ::Does any feel we should/shouldn't request this extension? Or has anyone already? If no-one has anything against, I'll go to . Timeroot Talk • • 23:40, 4 April 2009 (UTC) :::I found it! I was just browsing some info about DPL, which I had never really looked at, and I realized: DPL can extract the information from the achievement pages! We could totally do away with the database; all information would be on the individual achievement pages. Look: produces I realize it's not quite right yet, but this was just a quick example. It seems that with a bit of parser functions (to apply classes), etc, it should all work very nicely. It won't need to be updated very often, so I feel it shouldn't create any lagg. Comments? Timeroot Talk • • 20:08, 12 April 2009 (UTC) :That sounds like a really good approach! I hope you can get a full example soon, so we can see it working in practice and implement it. Quartic ~ insanity is a virtue | Talk 20:15, 12 April 2009 (UTC) ::Hmm, I just thought of a potential issue - is there a way to get this to show the small image, rather than the large one used on the achievement subpage? Quartic ~ insanity is a virtue | Talk 20:17, 12 April 2009 (UTC) :::Yes, there is. You just need to manipulate the right data the right way; I'm still figuring out the way this whole thing works, though, so it may take a little while. But I got a pretty good idea of how to make to happen. ;-) Timeroot Talk • • 20:49, 12 April 2009 (UTC) Done! You can see it right here. I'll move it to a template and begin transcluding on some pages for demonstration as soon as I get a consensus from some of the other active sysops. Timeroot Talk • • 03:36, 13 April 2009 (UTC) Brilliant! I missed the previous discussion somehow, which I why I haven't said so before. The one thing I'm not 100% sure about is the ordering scheme, but that's only a minor detail. OrbFu 07:46, 13 April 2009 (UTC) :Thanks! You're right, the ordering is the only thing I can't get to work quite perfectly. The achievements don't have any natural order (such as alphabetic, ordered by rewards, etc.), so I told the DPL to order the achievements by the date achievement pages they were created. This should work fine for most, as all the pages were created in the order they are listed, but for a few games, such as Arcanists or Armies of Gielinor, there are one or two pages that were created out of order, and this makes problems. In the end, we may need to make some type of custom "sort key" parameter in Infobox achievment, or some expanding of Achievement list. :However, we can apply this to the majority of pages. If you look at most games, such as Pixelate, Zombie Dawn, Bouncedown, etc, it looks fine. So, how does Aik Hui feel about this? If we actually make this change, it'll be a pretty big difference, so we definitely need consent from all active sysops (apparently, Bigd56 hadn't come back to stay... :-[ ) Timeroot Talk • • 22:53, 13 April 2009 (UTC) ::Sorry for not having commented earlier. At first I was a bit sceptical about this (back when all the info was on one page), but with the data moved to separate articles I think it's fine, and it helps deter vandalism. 19118219 Talk 06:25, 17 April 2009 (UTC)